Dave, you raise an issue that's been bugging me for years. I've actually never downloaded anything off the DLS after running into trouble with the UP Gas Turbine model. I did download it, only to find I had to download bogeys from here and something else from there. In the end I gave up.
In some respects, Auran shouldn't accept an item unless all the dependencies are on the DLS. There's nothing worse than walking into a store and purchasing something, only to find out you need another component from somewhere else. Electronics are a good example. You always worry that the items you want from St. elsewhere may not be available, or even work with the thing you purchased.
Third party purveyors always start off with good intentions, but it doesn't take long for them to (a) lose interest, (b) modify their web site and forget to redirect, (c) forget to pay for their URL, etc. As an example, I ran the first Trainz Community Web Ring which listed well over 100 sites, many of which contained assets. After three years all but a dozen of those sites were defunct. Then take all the sites hosted by GeoCities. They were all wiped out when Yahoo pulled the plug. We can't blame Yahoo as half their million plus sites were dead. Despite notifying everyone a hundred times over, hardly anyone bothered to move their site to other servers. We lost dozens of great Trainz sites as a result.
Time is our enemy. many of the great assets out there are/were stored on private sites owned by people who have now moved on. Once you lose interest, it's difficult to be concerned about the people who are interested in you.
There is no solution. Attrition is guaranteed. The DLS for all its faults, is the only safe haven for assets, but it now faces pressure to support current versions of Trains and let anything that doesn't work with 2009/10 fall by the wayside.
R.I.P.
P.S. There may be around this problem. N3V (Auran) could stipulate that any third party item built for Trainz other that certified payware, is open source. (Public Domain) That way people could store stuff on other sites so that the item would at least be available from somewhere. Too many people have walked away and dumped their stuff, but the do-gooder's are all screaming "Copyright!"
In some respects, Auran shouldn't accept an item unless all the dependencies are on the DLS. There's nothing worse than walking into a store and purchasing something, only to find out you need another component from somewhere else. Electronics are a good example. You always worry that the items you want from St. elsewhere may not be available, or even work with the thing you purchased.
Third party purveyors always start off with good intentions, but it doesn't take long for them to (a) lose interest, (b) modify their web site and forget to redirect, (c) forget to pay for their URL, etc. As an example, I ran the first Trainz Community Web Ring which listed well over 100 sites, many of which contained assets. After three years all but a dozen of those sites were defunct. Then take all the sites hosted by GeoCities. They were all wiped out when Yahoo pulled the plug. We can't blame Yahoo as half their million plus sites were dead. Despite notifying everyone a hundred times over, hardly anyone bothered to move their site to other servers. We lost dozens of great Trainz sites as a result.
Time is our enemy. many of the great assets out there are/were stored on private sites owned by people who have now moved on. Once you lose interest, it's difficult to be concerned about the people who are interested in you.
There is no solution. Attrition is guaranteed. The DLS for all its faults, is the only safe haven for assets, but it now faces pressure to support current versions of Trains and let anything that doesn't work with 2009/10 fall by the wayside.
R.I.P.
P.S. There may be around this problem. N3V (Auran) could stipulate that any third party item built for Trainz other that certified payware, is open source. (Public Domain) That way people could store stuff on other sites so that the item would at least be available from somewhere. Too many people have walked away and dumped their stuff, but the do-gooder's are all screaming "Copyright!"
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